Monday, November 12, 2007

The pic on the right (courtesy Dale McKinnon) shows what she saw from shore at Post Pt. today. Yes, that frothing mess of water is Bellingham Bay, a generally calm and peaceful part of the Northwest inland waters. Wind readings were off the charts at iWindsurf today (literally, as their new dynamic graphs top out somewhere around 50 mph). Airport recorded gusts around 60 knots; BCS showed peaks in the mid-70's mph range.

The pic was taken from shore at Marine Park - so her camera's vantage point was about 8 feet above water level. Clearly, the swell was well over head high. Mike Sumpter reported huge (100' high) spin drifts earlier in the day. Most of the guys apparently went to Cherry Point for some saner conditions. Not sure who that lone sailor is; might be Brett, taking his Bonzer for a ride.

It's been really windy the last two days or so. Yesterday and the day before, there was quite a bit of sunshine thrown into the mix as well. Oh well, back to taking care of that shoulder...

It's been four weeks now since I wrenched my shoulder. Luckily, since it's all just sprains, contusion, and a partial tear, the worst is pretty much over. A PT friend of mine from Berkeley likens inflammation to an angry bear - you just don't want to poke it in the eye, at least until it's all well-fed and calmed down (and that's probably where that little analogy breaks down - I have a really hard time seeing why you'd ever want to poke a bear in the eye, even once that's not-angry...).

My shoulder is now at that happy non-angry-bear state, and according to my PT here it's time to start poking it a bit with stabilization exercises while resting all the stuff that's not quite ready and giving it lots of icing/heat to get the blood flowing. Funny thing about my PT - he sized me up after talking to me during the exam, then told me that how quickly I'd heal would be entirely up to discipline or, as he put it, whether I can avoid being stupid. Now that there's not constant pain as a reminder, I'm starting to see what he's talking about.

And that's the program for the next three weeks or so - don't be stupid, ice/heat, and stabilize the shoulder while working around it to keep the rest of my body in shape.

Today, after a bunch of rain and ugly weather, there was sunshine, 55 degree air temps, and a nice 12-15 knot breeze on the bay. Since I'm a few weeks away from being ready to grab my gear and heading down to the water, I headed to the gym. Good motivation for sure.

About

I race windsurfers, and have been passionate about windsurfing since I first started as a grom on a pond in Northern Germany in 1979. This blog is my way of sharing my stoke for the sport. I'm re-purposing my website for my IT Consulting business, so if you need some pragmatic systems solutions, be sure to stop by there. In the meantime, check out the posts, feel free to comment or send an email through the contact form, and be sure to visit my sponsors' websites.